There’s no better way to learn how to use Photoshop and Lightroom than by listening to the pros. Get to grips with photo editing with lessons by expert photographers and editors.
It depends on your objective: are you focused on detailed image editing, a busy photographer wanting to stay organised, or a multi-disciplined creative mixing photography with illustration?
Discover where you sit in the Lightroom v Photoshop debate.
Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard image-editing software used by creative professionals and passionate amateurs alike. It gives photographers, digital designers, and artists ultimate creative control.
With Photoshop, you can transform images pixel by pixel with powerful image editing software – retouching photos and merging illustration with photography to create contemporary art.
Adobe Lightroom is aimed at photographers, with its useful combination of lite editing tools and organisational capabilities. With Lightroom, photographers can manage their workflows – retouching photos and creating easy-to-navigate catalogues of images for specific projects.
Photographers can give photos star ratings to make them easy to find while managing their projects across their smartphone, tablet, or desktop, with apps and cloud storage.
The main difference between Lightroom and Photoshop is this:
Professional photographers often use a combination of both – Lightroom for their day-to-day workflows, and Photoshop for detailed editing work. So it’s not always a case of Lightroom or Photoshop or Lightroom v Photoshop – it can be Lightroom and Photoshop together.
Another important point: Lightroom is focused solely on photographers, whereas Photoshop is used across creative disciplines – including graphic design.
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Photoshop |
Photoshop Lightroom |
BASIC PHOTO EDITING |
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Crop, rotate and straighten |
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Adjust light and colour |
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Make complex edits |
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Apply the same edits to a whole batch of images |
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Remove unwanted objects |
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ADVANCED PHOTO EDITING AND ORGANISATION |
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Edit raw images |
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Make advanced colour corrections and lightening adjustments |
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Use advanced retouching capabilities |
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Remove unwanted objects with pixel-level precision and detail |
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Use layers to combine colours and textures |
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Save and apply presets to multiple photos at one time |
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Rate images to make them searchable |
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Watch step-by-step tutorials by experts |
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Store and organise your full photo library |
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CREATIVE DESIGN |
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Cut out objects and make selections |
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Combine images into a new creative project |
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Draw and paint with brushes and pens |
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Create 3D artwork |
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Get creative with filters |
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Photoshop has advantages over Lightroom for serious photo editors and creative professionals – as well as students in disciplines such as graphic design, illustration, and publishing. This is mostly due to its superior power for image manipulation, creation, and enhancement.
Advantages of Photoshop include:
Lightroom has advantages over Photoshop for amateur and professional photographers who need to keep their photo libraries organised and have easy access to basic editing tools. This is mostly because Lightroom is a one-stop shop for working across devices on the go.
Advantages of Lightroom include:
Both Photoshop and Lightroom are leading image-editing tools. Photoshop is more powerful and has a fuller editing feature set, while Lightroom is a digital studio which combines basic photo editing with image management.
Use Photoshop for… |
Use Lightroom for… |
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DesiComplex photo editing and simple retouching. |
Retouching your photos’ light, colour, and perspective with simple edits. |
Working with layers to build an image – adjusting and refining for creative control. |
Organising your photos into albums and libraries for projects. |
Combining images with text and vector graphics to create artworks. |
Managing photos across your smartphone, tablet, and the cloud. |
Combining multiple shots to create an arty composite image. |
Rating photos for easy categorisation after a photo shoot. |
Creating art, graphic design, or illustration. |
Handling large amounts of photos to get more work done more quickly. |
Choose Lightroom if… you’re a photographer who takes lots of images and needs a tool that helps you stay organised as well as retouching photos.
Knowing the differences between Lightroom and Photoshop will help you to pick the best image editor for any given project. In many cases it’s not a Lightroom v Photoshop decision – the two are designed to work seamlessly with each other.
You can process a photo in Lightroom and then press command E or control E to pass it over to Photoshop, where you can fine-tune it. Many photographers begin the editing process with Lightroom – because it excels at handling large amounts of photos – before moving on to Photoshop for more complex jobs.
What’s more, it can be more cost effective to pay for both apps as opposed to just one or the other. If you want to enjoy the benefits of both Photoshop and Lightroom – an options which suits many photographers – check out the combined Photography Plan.
What’s more, it can be more cost effective to pay for both apps as opposed to just one or the other. If you want to enjoy the benefits of both Photoshop and Lightroom – an options which suits many photographers – check out the combined Photography Plan.
There’s no better way to learn how to use Photoshop and Lightroom than by listening to the pros. Get to grips with photo editing with lessons by expert photographers and editors.
Crop and straighten a photo to improve composition
Correct an unwanted color cast
Improve contrast and brightness in a photo with Levels
Adjust the intensity of colors in a photo
Sharpen a photo to bring out detail
Save a photo in the best format for your needs
See what you can do with Lightroom Classic
Import your photos
Organize - save your favorites into a collection
Edit your first photos
Understanding the Develop module
Change the look of a photo with presets
Crop and straighten your photos
Easily adjust highlights and shadows
Adjust clarity, vibrance, and saturation
Remove haze in a photo
Adjustment Brush: the basics
Start using Lightroom Classic with Photoshop
There are several ways to buy Photoshop or Lightroom – or indeed Photoshop and Lightroom. We’ll quickly take you through them to help you make an informed choice.
If you think you may want to use Photoshop and Lightroom, as many photographers do, then the combined Photography Plan could be the best option.
If you’re a creative who works with illustration as well as photography, you’ll get the best value from a full
Creative Cloud subscription. This gives you access to all the Creative Cloud apps, so you can work in Illustrator and InDesign as well as Photoshop.
Before you take out a subscription, you may want to have a play around with Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom to see which is best for you. You can get a free trial of any Adobe Creative Cloud product to do just that. Get started now
Generally, professional photographers use both Lightroom and Photoshop – rather than one or the other.
With Lightroom, you can manage your workflows and stay organised. Lightroom is great for working on the go – as it’s available on smartphones and iPads – and making light edits to batches of photos.
You can use Photoshop to do more detailed editing work. For example, adding creative effects and editing photos pixel by pixel to remove the smallest imperfections and removing objects.
Photoshop cannot do everything Lightroom can.
You can use Photoshop and Lightroom together. Photographers will often start work in Lightroom – organising and categorising images and making light edits – before opening photos that need more work in Photoshop.
Because both apps are part of the Creative Cloud suite, they are well integrated with each other. You can open a photo from Lightroom in Photoshop with a simple keyboard shortcut.
Lightroom is not included with Photoshop: they are separate products. But if you want access to both, take out the Photography Plan. This plan includes Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, as well as Photoshop Express and Photoshop Camera.
Many photographers use both Lightroom and Photoshop: Lightroom for organising their photos into albums and basic editing, and Photoshop for more complex editing jobs.
As an editing tool, Lightroom is generally better for beginners than Photoshop. But really, Lightroom is aimed at photographers – both professional and amateur. That’s because it combines lite editing with image management features such as albums and libraries – to help photographers manage projects and workflows.
If you’re a beginner to photography, you may be better off with Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Express, or Photoshop Camera. These more basic apps are ideal for smartphone photographers looking to get started with photo editing.
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Learn to create surreal images by compositing two photographs.
Photography. Video. Design. UX. 3D and AR. Creative Cloud has everything you need, wherever your imagination takes you.